The pigeon tunnel
Subtitle: stories from my life
By: John le Carré
Edition: Large print edition.
Series: Thorndike Press large print basic series
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 517
ISBN-13: 9781410493262
Subjects: English Novelists; Biography
Description: From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or the opening bars of Beethovens Fifth; visiting Rwandas museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide; celebrating New Years Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command; interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev; listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov; meeting with two former heads of the KGB; watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People; or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.
Notes: "Sources": pages 511-513.
Table of contents: title: Don't be beastly to your Secret Service --; title: Dr Globke's laws --; title: Official visit --; title: Fingers on the trigger --; title: To whomsoever it may concern --; title: Wheels of British justice --; title: Ivan Serov's defection --; title: A legacy --; title: The innocence of Murat Kurnaz --; title: Going out into the field --; title: Bumping into Jerry Westerby --; title: Lonely in Vientiane --; title: Theatre of the Real: Dances with Arafat --; title: Theatre of the Real: The Villa Brigitte --; title: Theatre of the Real: A question of guilt --; title: Theatre of the Real: Terms of endearment --; title: The Soviet knight is dying inside his armour --; title: The Wild East: Moscow 1993 --; title: Blood and treasure --; title: The biggest bears in the garden --; title: Among the Ingush --; title: Joseph Brodsky's prize --; title: The wrong horse's mouth --; title: His brother's keeper --; title: Quel Panama! --; title: Under deep cover --; title: Hunting for warlords --; title: Richard Burton needs me --; title: Alec Guinness --; title: Lost masterpieces --; title: Bernard Pivot's necktie --; title: Lunching with prisoners --; title: Son of the author's father --; title: To Reggie with thanks --; title: The most wanted man --; title: Stephen Spender's credit card --; title: Advice to an aspiring novelist --; title: The last official secret.